About
Our strictly access-controlled biocontainment facility is comprised of 28 rooms, 10 Airlocks, and supported by 4 floors of infrastructure. Precision engineering allows negative pressure controls maintaining an inward flow of air at all times with a multitude of pressure and environmental sensors monitoring the status of the operations. Every equipment in the facility has UPS power back-up and the entire facility in on a back-up power generator, that ensures continuous operation. The facility is supported by 24/7 emergency response processes, provided by an external security service provider and QIMR Berghofer's Security teams.
Services
Our facility is capable of hosting multiple concurrent research on a variety of risk-group 3 pathogens. There are two distinct spaces within the PC3 Facility; a Virus Facility with six independent suites; and an Insectary with three suites, all with individual access-control. Four suites are also equipped with animal housing capabilities.
The Virus Facility also features several major scientific equipment including:
- FACS Jazz cell-sorter is a high-speed cell sorter that is housed inside a biohazard Class II enclosure. The instrument has two lasers beams 488 and 561nm and six fluorescent detectors;
- EVOS FL Imaging Microscope is a fully integrated microscope system with LED light sources directly coupled to excitation and emission filters that make fluorescence imaging as simple as possible. Fluorescence imaging of cells in tissue culture plates and in slides;
- Olympus IX73 brightfield and phase contrast imaging microscope comes complete with motorised stage, focus and camera.
The 28 rooms across the facility are supported by a comprehensive suite of research equipment including:
Projects
SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19
Malaria
Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV)